I was driving near Madison Wisconsin this afternoon and looked down at the outside temperature display in the dash of my Dodge truck and about had a heart attack when I saw it read 104 (degrees F)! I thought this is Wisconsin, not Arizona, or did I miss a turn somewhere?!

Checking NWS weather tonight I see Madison set a new record this afternoon of 105 (or 104 depending on station) deg F which was 7 degrees higher than the old record for July 5th of 98 deg F.

However in the same NWS data I see there was a stretch of 100 deg + July days in 1936 with a high of 107 deg F....

So it is hard to say this current heat wave is an indication of climate change since we had a warmer stretch 76 years ago.... climate is really statistics.

As far as the original question goes, would the 1930's dust bowl be considered an example of a change that caused folks to move?  It certainly did cause a "migration" of sorts but mostly because the population there at that time had no means of withstanding what turned out to be a multi year, but not permanent, climate change.

It seems to me that we should always have some plan to deal with less than ideal growing conditions, maybe even extending for several years.

Cover crops (note the vetch thread below), lower corn populations, less tillage, earlier hybrids....all are steps that can be taken to reduce the effects of weather patterns... to a point.

Maybe the take home message of this year in much of the corn belt is that we should not count on nor base our system on ideal growing conditions occurring every year.  This does  probably mean we would have less than peak yields in a good weather year but could withstand some less than ideal weather.

However the factor which changes things a great deal is crop insurance... but that's another topic.

An interesting thread. Thank you all.

Jim at Dawn

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